Messy Jobs
by Missie2
Summary: Illegal pearl modifications can be a messy business.


**Messy Jobs**

Author's note: I've decided I'm going to continue with the Orthoclase and Pearl stories as a set of one-shots, I like writing them more than I thought I would. Although they are technically OC's of mine, feel free to borrow them to do whatever with.

Obligatory request to check out my novel on Amazon: The Hothouse Princesses by S.A. Hemstock. If you like the work I do in fanfiction you may like my original work, it runs on similar themes.

…..

"Has anyone ever told you..."

"Yes," Orthoclase said with a brittle smile. "Yes, they have."

She turned quickly on her heel as the shop worker gave her her change and stomped off, Pearl rushing daintily behind to keep up. She'd been in a good mood at the start of the cycle, but it was ruined now.

"I need a rejig," she growled back at Pearl, slowing down to keep pace with her. "Think you can do it?"

"Of course," Pearl agreed.

Pearl was dependable, above all things. Most of the rejig stations refused to change up Orthoclase's mass more than once an orbit, for fear of cracking her gem, but Pearl did it whenever she was asked to and with considerably less decent equipment. A new set of apparel and hopefully nobody would compare her looks to Yellow Diamond again for, oh, at least another three orbits.

Being a rare gem was such a struggle sometimes.

Of course, once they got back to the workshop there were a whole lot of job messages waiting on the holo-form. Orthoclase scanned them and sighed.

"We would get the complicated ones now," she said, rubbing at her gem setting. "Forget the rejig, we can do it later."

…..

The first job was given by an Aquamarine, and if there was one kind of gem Orthoclase hated more than Yellow Diamond, it was Aquamarines. Imperious little twits, all of them. This one apparently wanted her pearl to be made smaller, like the newer models. She didn't want to spend the money to get a new one and there was information on the old one she needed intact. That meant a gem shave was out of the question and they'd have to whittle down the pearl's manifested body.

"You don't much like these ones, do you?" Orthoclase asked when she picked up the pearl from the drop-off point.

"I don't have any strong feelings about it," Pearl answered, as vague as ever.

"Right," Orthoclase scoffed. "Might as well get it over with. Start jamming the circuits."

Pearl used a pulse applicator to stun the pearl's gem into a sedated state while Orthoclase used a scalpel to slice neatly through its skin, peel back the thin layer of muscle and locate the first sets of framework in the chest. There were more set frames in the chest than anywhere else on a pearl, those were always the ones she got out of the way first.

Using a suspense wire, she shaved away the frames in the chest. Pearl caught the shavings in a sheet underneath, a process that always involved submerging her elbows in green nacre-rich blood. It was one of the reasons Orthoclase guessed she didn't like jobs like these, but she wouldn't admit to it.

"Read me back the dimensions again," she said, testing the width of the newly-shaved frame.

"5 by 16, 4 by 8."

Orthoclase swore, and shaved another layer off of the chest.

"Aquamarine had better not stiff us on the payement," she snarled into the pearl's open chest. "Anyone else would have snapped it by now."

"If you didn't want to do it you should have said no," Pearl told her.

That impertinance would have gotten her slapped or even processed in a normal household, but Pearl had the luxury of being owned by someone that liked a touch of honesty in her dealings, illegal though they were.

"And if I said no, she'd have gotten someone else and then game over for this pearl," Orthoclase replied with a shrug and a rueful smile. "You could be thankful."

"I could," Pearl said, which was as close to a thanks as Orthoclase was likely to get.

Pearl held the legs down as Orthoclase shaved down the frames; they were likely to kick or twitch even with the pearl unconcious, and reducing the size of the feet without snapping them off was a nail-bitingly careful task.

The arms were simple enough, but because they were snipped from the elbow down a new elbow had to be created further up, and to do that a hinge had to be put between the framework in the stump. Pearl mass was prone to rejecting foreign objects (except for the spike) and the gem would have to be 'tricked' into thinking it was part of the whole.

Once the body was done, the head had to be reduced only a little (the large head on a small body was endearing to some customers) but it still meant the skin had to be peeled away to get at the head frame. Little sections that controlled the pearl's expressions had to be nipped, prodded and sewed into place to stop the face from sagging. Even the optics had to be reduced by a fraction.

By the time Orthoclase was finished, her arms ached and creaked from holding them so tense. Pearl was splattered in blood from shoulder to knee. Orthoclase dismissed her so she could take a distillery wash while she herself ran the stimulation machine that set the pearl mass conditions permenantly. The pearl released its form, and when it reformed it was more than half its original size.

"Almost the same size as your owner now," she told it, holding up a small reflector in front of it. "Happy?"

"Yes," the pearl said agreeably, though as with all the pearls she had worked on she couldn't tell if it was genuine.

Orthoclase sent it off as soon as possible, and prepped her workshop for the next job.

"I could make you shorter if you want," Orthoclase offered as soon as Pearl was out of the distillery. "Cuter, maybe."

"No thank you," Pearl replied, as always.

…..

There was something suspicious about the next pearl, from the very moment they brought it back from the drop-off. It looked too...clean. It didn't look like a remodel was needed in any way.

"Who gave the job?" Pearl asked, taking one look at Orthoclase's face and figuring out what she was thinking in a way that made Orthoclase very envious.

"A Kunzite," Orthoclase mumbled. "I did a tracer check, there's nothing in there. But it doesn't feel right."

"Would you like me to operate?" Pearl asked.

"Maybe," she answered, scanning the remodel pearl up and down. "It's a response retooling, kindgergarten-grade stuff."

Orthoclase watched Pearl connect to the remodel remotely, her fingers flying across the mainframe rooting through code. None of the code looked out of the ordinary, until...

When Pearl suddenly disconnected, blacked out the mainframe and practically threw herself across the room away from the remodel. Orthoclase reacted instantly, wiping the mainframe and shutting the tools away in her purpose-built snap-casing.

"Where is it?" she hissed to Pearl.

"In the subspace," Pearl hissed back. "It tried to connect, I think I stopped it in time."

Figures. Gems rarely used the subspace, most didn't even know it was there. But nobody had ever thought to put a tracer in there before.

"I could root it out and reset it somewhere else," Pearl continued, her hands flapping anxiously (this being one of those rare occasions when Pearl lost her composure), "Or I can clean sweep it before they..."

"Pearl," Orthoclase said sternly, laying a hand on her shoulder. "What do I always say at times like this?"

"Um, don't panic?" Pearl mumbled.

"And what are you doing right now?"

"...panicking."

"Yep," Orthoclase said as she got up, strode with purpose towards the remodel pearl and grabbed a tool from around her waist. "We're going to fry the place. Get ready to run."

She jammed the probe into the setting of the remodel pearl's gem and sent a crackling ball of energy coursing through it. The pearl released its form and Orthoclase pocketed it as Pearl gathered up the workshop to store in her subspace. They tossed a can of propofil gas into the middle of the now-empty workshop and placed a flare beside it. After a while, the heat would destroy the room and whatever evidence was left.

On the way to the new workshop, they tossed the pearl into a culvert, where it would reform and be picked up by the impound at least one cycle later.

…..

About four jobs into the new workshop, a barracks pearl came to them.

Orthoclase was dreading this one (and she was somewhat certain Pearl was too) because barracks pearls were almost always in bad shape and some were even beyond Orthoclase's skills. Financially, she was able to turn them down but she had a feeling Pearl wanted her to take them even though they both hated the barracks jobs.

However, when she got the pearl back to the workshop and examined it, it looked to be in decent shape. Not shop-perfect, but remarkably whole for a barracks pearl.

"Guess this one's owners managed a little restraint," she laughed, prodding the remodel pearl gently with a somatic rod. "Colour me surprised."

The instructions were sparse, they just said they had returned from an offworld mission and wanted the pearl looked over for damage. Naturally, having a pearl on the barracks was illegal so they couldn't go to a legit pearl maintanance centre.

Orthoclase checked over the pearl's inner workings, tested its range of motions, inspected its code and noticed nothing amiss. Its fingers were a bit twitchy, but otherwise...

"Get back!"

Pearl's little cry caught Orthoclase so off guard that she went rigid, so she was easily moved when Pearl threw herself across the room and barreled into her, knocking her up against the wall.

"What the..." she about managed to sputter, but the words died in her throat.

Pearl had found a scalpel and was digging it hard into the remodel pearl's gem. Her arm was locked around the remodel's chin, her knees digging into the remodel's shoulder. A high-pitched whine was building in her throat, Orthoclase could almost hear it...

….no, it _wasn't Pearl_ making that sound...

 _She wasn't a combat gem, she had never encountered a zoatox in the field, but she had heard them from far away, that distinctive scream that made any sensible gem terrified._

A small beige object came hurtling out of the remodel's gem, it twisted three times and scurried with alarming speed in the direction of the door. The unnatural way it moved had Orthoclase too stunned to react.

Pearl did not have that problem. She crossed the room in one single, astonishingly graceful, leap and caught the thing by what looked like its tail. Her fingers were lacerated and oozed blood but she held it firm enough to stab it repeatedly with the scalpel. When it stopped moving, she grabbed the nearest polymer barrel and crushed it until she was sure there was nothing left.

"Holy Core, mother of us all," Orthoclase murmured, brushing her hair back with her trembling hands. "Was that..."

"Yes," Pearl answered, calm but grim.

"Is there any..."

"No, there was only one."

"You sound certain."

"I am certain."

"That's good enough for me," Orthoclase sighed. The relief was making her feel weak.

They were able to send the pearl back with a clean rating. For cycles afterwards, Orthoclase brought up the fact that they had probably saved Homeworld but nobody would ever know.

"I saved Homeworld," Pearl would insist a little snippily. "You just watched me."

"There'd be nothing to save if I hadn't endangered us by bringing it here in the first place, right?" Orthoclase would reply.

…..

After nearly sixty cycles, she finally got around to her rejigging. Looking in the reflector afterwards, she had to admit Pearl had done a good job. Her hair was shaggy, still a punkish look but not stuck in the rigid lines of the Orthoclase type, her colour was less of a bold shade and more of a white with a yellow undertint, her eyes were enhanced to make them appear turned in at the corner and her apparel was a slapdash mix of tight clinging mesh with draped-over half-torn cloth. Hard-wearing but messy, exactly what she needed.

"You should get a rejig next," she told Pearl. "At least lose the tail, it's prissy."

"No thank you," Pearl replied.


End file.
